NEWSMAKER: Rosemary Scapicchio, lawyer for high-profile defendants

Thursday

IN THE NEWS: For representing some of the South Shore's most notorious murder defendants

NOW YOU KNOW: She argued and won a case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004.

HER STORY: Rosemary Scapicchio often finds herself in the company of people accused of violent, unspeakable crimes. It comes with the job.

Scapicchio says she knew starting in high school that she wanted to be a lawyer, but it wasn't until years later, when she was studying at Suffolk University, that she knew she wanted to be a defense attorney.

One of her mentors while in school, Frank Kelleher, introduced her to criminal defense and prepared her to be murder certified, a five-year process of studying, training and arguing first- and second-degree murder cases. It was working with and learning from Kelleher that Scapicchio discovered her passion for defense work.

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“I wanted to try to help people,” Scapicchio said.

After passing the bar exam, Scapicchio opened her own practice focusing on criminal defense. One of her first cases was in Norfolk Superior Court defending Jeffery Hinton, a Randolph teen accused of conspiracy to murder. Scapicchio was successful in keeping keeping him out of prison.

Her clients over the years have also included Jameel Williams, a gang member who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a Milton High School graduate; David Evans, a Quincy man convicted of manslaughter for his role in the death of a Cape Cod man; and most recently, Michael Moscaritolo, a Quincy lawyer whose murder trial ended in a hung jury this past May.

Scapicchio said when determining what type of case to take, she always sits down and talks with the potential client.

“In almost every case you can find some decent issues,” Scapicchio said. "I look for issues that I think we can litigate, and then I decide whether or not I want the case."

Scapicchio said that the most rewarding part of her job is getting the chance to see her clients walk free. She once helped overturn the conviction of a client, Sean Ellis, who had been wrongfully convicted of killing a Boston detective and imprisoned for more than 20 years. She said it was amazing to see him leave the courthouse and regain his freedom.

“The feeling of being able to watch shackles and everything fall off them and them join their families, there’s nothing like it in the world,” Scapicchio said.

Her fight on behalf of her clients led her in 2004 to the Supreme Court, where she argued that federal sentencing guidelines that had been in place for the past 20 years were unjustly causing defendants to spend more time in prison than they deserve.

Scapicchio’s client, Duncan Fanfan, was facing 15 to 16 years of prison time because of federal mandatory sentencing even though the jury that decided the verdict in Fanfan’s case recommended only five or six years. Scapicchio helped convince the court that the federal mandatory sentences were unconstitutional.

Since the case, Scapicchio has been busy helping defendants on the South Shore. Most recently, she represented Steven James, convicted of beating a teenager to death with a baseball bat in Rockland in 1994, at his parole hearing.

Scapicchio also defended and is now preparing for a retrial of Michael Moscaritolo, one of four people accused of taking part in a robbery that led to the death of Robert McKenna in his Marshfield home. While found guilty of one count of aggravated burglary and unarmed robbery and five counts of larceny of a firearm, a mistrial was declared on the murder charge in May. Moscaritolo’s case is scheduled for retrial in January.

Scapicchio said if she had one message to tell those training to be lawyers, it would be that defense is always looking for more help.

“We always need people who are committed to upholding the Constitution,” Scapicchio said. “We need more people in the trenches.”

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